Gearsmith

I'm one of the many who only read the Call to Action after it all ended. I would have given, too! Darn it.

Also, shouldn't that have been "Call to Dinner", TonyV?

*I know another poster noted he wished we could start a fund to crowd source the game. I really second that. I suspect this is pending on having some idea -- which I assume TonyV as well as others are working on -- of what goal we really need in order to buy off NC Soft.

However, I'd vote to start fundraising sooner rather than later just to give us more time to get contributions rolling. It wouldn't help much to hit a big number on 11/30 only....

Anyway, I'm glad to be yet another player who's willing to contribute and help. I can throw a couple of hundred dollars at supporting COH if it helps. It's worth it to me!

Gearsmith
Virtue

Hi all,

Does anyone know if Invisibility will let you walk next to a mob and just hang out?

Gears

Here's how my own Radiation/Electricity blaster looks. She's built as a ranged only team-leader type: largely because I've spent a lot of time playing a single-target melée blaster and wanted a change.

1 Neutrino Blast (Slots: x,3,3,5,5,7)
1 Electric Fence (x)
2 X-Ray Beam (x,7,9,9,11,11)
4 Irradiate (x)
6 Electron Haze (x,13,13,15,15,17)
8 Aim (x)
10 Swift
12 Hurdle
14 Leadership: Assault
16 Build Up (x)
18 Cosmic Burst (x,19,19,21,21,23)
20 Stamina
22 Leadership: Tactics (x)
24 Leadership: Vengeance (x)
26 Neutron Bomb (x,27,27,29,29)
28 Travel
30 Travel
32 Atomic Blast
35 TBD
38 TBD

Now, taking Leadership is odd for most blaster but if you team often it's a fun change. Plus you can always make your dual build #2 be a solo focus.

My main blasts are slotted as Acc/End/Rech and the usual 3xDam. I plan on slotting Irradiate later mainly as a big def debuff for teams.

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Oh but they imcreased the animation times on Stone Melee for no reason, what a great waste of time.


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Or so they can fit the Stone melee animations in with the upcoming Shield defensive set. But dont take BaBs word for it at all.

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So are you calling Back Alley Brawler a liar? He said in a post and he told me that SM was changed for shields in a PM. He said if they were going to change any Damage Per Animation powers they'd start with Energy Transfer first.

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Not true. I said those power animations got looked at because we are working on shields. That's what lead us to discover the minor bug.

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Also it brings up a second response:

Why do minor bugs take higher priority over balance reasons?

Why correct bugs (That are essentially nerfs) when you have SERIOUS balance issues with animation times in sets? It once again creates unfairness between powersets.

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Most likely because fixing small things takes... small amounts of time.

Fixing balance issues (or percieved issues) takes a lot longer.

Given an infiinte amount of time, we'd get both. Given that they have other responsibilities, from new content through serious bug fixes, they have constraints on time that mean prioritizing.... not because they're committed to ignoring balance issues, but because that requires stepping back and investing a boat-load of revision time and testing. Such is my guess.

Still one of the best guides out there.

*Re-designed my Arch/Energy blaster's costume recently and am now wholly absorbed again into sharp, pointy sticks. Yes!

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I would love to see the Rualuu have a greater presense in the game other than just for lvl 40+ content, they are very cool looking and so seldom seen.

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If you're on Champion and begging for a PL in Atlas as I'm passing through, you might get to see them sooner than you think.

Several issues ago, Zube had a kora fruit mission in the shard waiting in his que when a game patch was applied. An odd bug moved the mission's door from the shard to Atlas Park. I have never completed it. Sometimes, when they're particularly annoying, I will respond to PL beggars by saying, "SURE you can join me in a mission! In fact, I have one right over heeeere...!"

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Awesome. Actually, I'd love to do that instead of Hellions.

PL meh, plz?

That was a LOT of fun to watch.

Interesting though, to hear them say "We will find a way to rid the world of the Rikti forever." I think this is just establishing a goal for the group rather than a real I-12 development, since I think Posi and Hero 1 said that they plan to use the Rikti for a long time to come. Nonetheless, good stuff.

So, if it were humanly possible to be more excited about I-12, this would have pushed me over the edge. As is, I'm already so excited that the boost is meaningless =P

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As a point of clarification not included in the press release specific for City of Heroes and City of Villains, this new voice chat technology will be used through the PlayNC Launcher and not directly through City of Heroes.

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Through the launcher? Interesting...

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I took a fast look at the V-Corp site. It looks like they handle the data for voice through their own equipment; one of their selling points is that game servers don't have to deal with extra load.

I'm interested but wary. There's plenty of times I don't want to chat with people while gamng. Plus, the potential for awkward silence is going to be hysterical.

"So. We're, uh... really tearing through those CoT, huh?"
"Yeah."
"....."

Somehow, that kind of things is less bad in chat =)

The good? Coordination. The bad? Having anyone in the room listen to your inane COH comments ("Hold that Mob? What are you taking about over there?).

That's a great resource. Thanks, Silver.

I like the attention paid to not thinking of the ATs as "stalker, blaster, tanker, etc." - it's valuable advice.

I was really impressed by this. Smart. Very smart.

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Whoo! Branching dialogue! And in the spirit of the forums, I have to complain:

"You just bring this up NOW?" This is potenially very, very cool for new missions and options. I'd like to add one where we get the option of smacking Phipps in the face, personally.

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He's the only villain contact that makes me feel bad about being a vilain. : \

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This announcement is composed of 90% win and 10% awesome.

That is all.

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....which adds up to 110% pie-style goodness.

Nice guide/post. I thought you did a good job of defining how to be constructive without sounding preachy - on a rather tough topic, no less =)

So, what's your follow-up guide going to be? You can't do just one, you know.

Geez, the stuff for Villains isn't THAT bad. It's not 733t, but it's solid enough. You'd think the Devs had given heroes new sets and replaced all Villain powers with Brawl, the way these posts are going.

In my book, this kind of thing is gravy for us - enjoy what you get, but the real updates are the Issues that NCSoft keeps spamming with loving regularity. If the bonus present isn't amazingly awesome, at least it's pretty good, and heck, it's "bonus."

Anyway, now I have to go roll some alts.

-Gears

If two people like it, what do you win?

I don't mind getting tells asking to join the team (and since I'm usually running the group, it cuts down on the "can you add so and so" guff) -- what does vex me is when I see a blank "can I join you" without the AT/level included. Do I want to add Villainous-Villain? How do I know!

Nice guide. I didn't know you could do %t with the Search list, so you just made my life a lot easier.

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Oh shi-, sorry people, I didn't notice, really D=

Someone gave the link and......oh shi-.....

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Man! I was so excited, too.

For me, this post makes me think about how much the Development Team really brings to the game experience - the content updates, power fixes, now sets, and above all, the community interaction. COH/V has grown by leaps and bounds over the last years... and a lot of what makes the game so darn good is being hooked on having a responsive, interested and player-friendly team behind the scenes. Thinking back on things like DAOC, Anarchy Online and others (and of course some Blizzard online games) - I couldn't go back, I've been spoiled.

This, also, is from someone who works in communications / CorporateSpeak. It's so nice to see a well-run, well-done comms effort. =)

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Ugh, too suspenseful...

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I check this thread sometimes just to see if re-reading it makes the V-EATs appear on my login.....


sigh.

Updated my Issue-10 Plant/Ice guide (8/24/07)with a section on perma-domination slotting/IOs (01/03/08).

The full guide is here: at this link.

And here is the updated section.

@Gearsmith

Unable to edit the above-reserved slot on IOs, so here's a quick update.

IO Slotting And You! Or: Spending Millions on Millionths of a Second

1. Primer Tips on Slotting Them Powers

IOs are a funny beast. They combine two very contradictory ideas: getting “more bang for your buck” through raising the total effectivness of each slot you dedicate to a power; and the “buy 3 get 1 free” trick that you see in sales, where the more you over-dedicate slots towards a set, the more fun, free bonuses also pop up.

As a quick rule of thumb, chasing a specific set for that +7% Accuracy (global) or +5% recharge (I’m looking at you, Crushing Impact Set!) can be very expensive and usually requires more slots than you would spend on enhancing that power if you were keeping to a reasonable minimum. For example, you really can spend several million on, oh, say, Crushing Impact (at 5 slots for that +recharge to all your powers), or you can spend 3 slots plus a base slot (total of 4) on a set/ common IO mix and manage rather nicely, thank you very much.

How to slot your powers in this new environment becomes very much a question of personal preference – and advice is limited pretty much to “what to avoid,” and “what your minimum should be.” Your real choice is following the Collect Global Bonuses And Mortgage Your House path, or the Enhance It Cheap, Envy Others path. Both work just fine, and you can always respect and switch from one style to the other when you have the influence to burn or if you’d rather sell those slotted-in fancier IOs for a few ka-jillion.

2. Case Study: Perma Domination. (Funding the Black Market)

One of the more interesting things brought to us by Issue 10 and IOs is the idea (proven) of perma-Domination (proven to be expensive). For an in-depth look at how to make it happen, I do suggest looking at _Brev_’s excellent guide here.

Global recharge bonuses, combined with Hasten, mean that you can influence how fast Domination recharges, letting you hit that golden-gray joybuzzer all day long in a constant frenzy of controllery, sadistic goodness.

The good? Obviously, you get to use domination 100% of the time. The bad? You need to slot and choose powers *very* specifically to make it work. If you’re working towards this goal, make sure it’s a respect build that you do late-game – there’s no point doing otherwise. Bear in mind also that if you /EX down for Ourobos or a friend’s mission or for PVP, you will likely lose some of the set bonuses that let you pull this trick off – and if you’re heavily rigged for perma-domination, you may perform poorly without its boost.

Here’s how your Plant/Ice might look if you tried this trick, plus some caveats:

1) This is a sample build, and there’s other ways to do this.
2) This particular build reaches 57.5% global recharge, which in a worst-case scenario means perma-domination in some cycles has a roughly 10-second gap. (E.g., you have to rebuild Dominations points in that few seconds and survive 10 seconds of bring mortal). This is avoidable by adding more recharge!
3) You can add more recharge if you add levels and more slots: the below is based on Prof. Winterseed’s roughly current level, not some personal dreamland of 44+ (I’m contractually obligated to alt.) Plus, if you find a Luck of the Gambler IO (+Recharge), this gets a lot easier – but they’re selling for some absurd 20+million sum, so Daisy suggests leaving wining the lottery out of this plan.
4) This is based around a level 40 number of powers/slots, which means that stamina and other powers not slotted below for global recharge are neglected. This gets easier at 42 and 43 -- but for this, you get only 1-2 spare slots for your hold or AOE hold. Then again, with the Dom/recharge bonuses, you wont' need much more. Still, builder beware: check it out in a hero, errr, villain planner before you sink your cash into a perma build.

The Parts:
Hasten: 3-sloted at 99% recharge (IOs)

Global Bonus: Each power below is 5-slotted.
[u]6.25% Recharge[u]
-Ice Blast: Entropic Chaos
-Ice Bolt: Entropic Chaos
-Bitter Ice Blast: Entropic Chaos
-Frost Breath: Positron’s Blast
-Seeds of Confusion: Malaise’s Illusions

[u]5% Recharge[u]
-Ice Sword: Crushing Impact
-Greater Ice Sword: Crushing Impact
-Spirit Tree/Health: Doctored Wounds

[u]3.75% Recharge[u]
-Entangle/Roots: Enfeebled Operation
-Carrion Creepers: Enfeebled Operation
-Ice Sword Circle: Tempered Readiness

Total Global Recharge: 5x(6.25) = 31.25 + 15 + (3*3.75) = 46.25 + 11.25 = 57.5%

Notes on This Build/Choices

Even slotting for something as arcane and specialized as this project, you can manage in a lot of different ways. Many different sets offer the 6.25 bonus, while the very rare one-slot Luck of the Gambler IO does 7.5% all on its own. Doctored Wounds in Health/Tree is a pretty horrible slotting, for example, but since we’re taking Health anyway, it lets you take another power slot for fun. Equally, almost every power in /Ice can be slotted as a Slow Set, giving 3.75% -- it’s your ball game. Just remember that you can’t have more than 5 of the same numeric bonus: a sixth 6.25% bonus will have no effect.

How This Works: The Math Walkthrough and the 10-Second Fail

Hasten should be up for most of Domination’s recharge time, with its added +70% recharge enhancement spurring that lovely power to pop back faster. Now, without factoring Hasten in, we see that Domination’s 200-sec recharge, as affected by our 57.5 global bonus, becomes… (200/ (1+.575) = 127 seconds. Great! Without Hasten, we’re already looking at Domination being up 90 seconds / down for 37 seconds before you can use it again. A lot better than the usual 90/110.

Adding in Hasten get somewhat tricky. Hasten isn’t always up, so you can’t count on its affecting Domination all the time. Instead, let’s look at the worst case scenario – with Hasten ready to use once Domination has already started. Then we’ll know what’s the longest you’ll have to deal with no-Domination… and have a good idea of how nice the 90% of the rest of the time will be.

Hasten lasts 120 seconds, and recharges in 450 seconds – which time is in fact modified by its own recharge bonus of 70% for the time that it’s active. Yikes, math. I’m going to quote Brev here, with some differing numbers for our case:

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While Hasten is up it recharges [ 120duration * ( 1 + 0.991enhancements + 0.575globalbonus + 0.7powereffect ) ] = 391.8 'ticks' of Hasten's 450 seconds recharge. The remaining 58.2 seconds-worth of Hasten's recharge are actually recharged in [ 58.2 / ( 1 + 0.991 + 0.69 ) ] = 22.7 seconds. That gives Hasten a total cycletime (including activation) of [ 120duration + 22.7downtime + 0.73activation ] = 144 seconds


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Okay, everyone take a break, get some tea, rub your eyes, hit the AH. Feeling better? Almost done.

Worst case, Hasten expires just before you re-hit Domination, and you lose out on its extra bonus for the full period between Hasten’s expiration and recharge – which for us is 22.7, aka 23 seconds.

For 23 seconds, you only get the global bonus to speed Domination along, then after that you get to enjoy the extra +70% recharge again. So, the 23 seconds recharge Domination by …(23 seconds*1+0.575) = 37.8 seconds effectivness. Domination is now 23 seconds into its duration, and it’s recharging in 200-38 (162) seconds.

Great, how Hasten kicks in for the rest of our current Domination run, which has 90-23… well, 67 seconds to go before we crash. 67seconds *(1 +0.575 +0.70) = 152.43. This, sadly, is not enough to reach the 162 recharge figure above – so in the worst case, you have a gap of 10 seconds in which to rebuild domination and suffer withdrawl.

On the bright side, the times when you hit this 10 second gap are a very small fraction of your overall “cycle” of Hasten-Domination. This worst case timing issue is not a repeating, “every third time” failure – but rather a problem that crops up once every several activations.

So, go forth and enjoy!

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I just realized after reading your post that i was dumb and made the guy a science origin. Am I going to be cursing myself that I can't light my oil slick? Just wanted to check because only being lvl 9 right now, I could start over.

If I decide not to start over are there any temp powers that will ignite it that I can get before I can pick up fire or energy at 41?

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I think you'll really want to ignite it. I think there's a few temporary powers that will work, but it could be tough to rely on them - that's a lot of uses.

I thought Reginald Longbarrel's get-up was great. Nice stuff by all of the contestants!

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Neither will BackAlleyBunny.

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Hmmm.........

<Runs off to the costume designer cackling madly-er>

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Oh boy. This could get ...disturbing.